On this episode of The Heat Check, I explain why is a Portland Trailwazer fan.
We have basically put Damian Lillard.
We've got golden handcuffs on him for the rest of his natural life. He's probably gonna get a gravestone in Portland. Why I'm so excited. I'm gonna explain to you all the thirty reasons why we're also gonna get into the new rule changes and the rule new ball, how that uh changes the complexion of the NBA, and why it's actually not so fun, and how it's affecting shooters league wide.
So do me a favorite rock drop that motherfucking This is gonna be a long winded story.
I'm gonna I'm gonna get to a point in a circuitous Man, let me just tell you about moving.
Moving is I tell you what. It's unlike anything else.
It's maybe they call it one of the most stressful events in your life. And there are things that it really just doesn't matter how much money you have that you have to do them yourself. Like I've tried to hire these things out. I'm willing to pay whatever, not whatever, but I'm willing to pay pretty much whatever. And they just they're just decisions that nobody but you can make. Like your eyeball is your brain. You know, stuff whether you need it, whether you don't, where it goes, et cetera.
And that takes time, that takes energy. That is hard.
And you have to figure out when to get the cable guy in and you can't just you have to figure out like you have to your eye line has to be where they set up the TV.
Like all of it is is you.
You know, even if Dame Lillard, even if you make forty million a year, some stuff you just have to do yourself.
Uh.
And even if you are Dame Lillard, you can hire some out right, But what if you're Dame Lollard's cousin. What if you're Dame Lillard's nephew, second cousin, second brother, whatever. Right, all of this to say, there are a few reasons. Based on a news story that has come to light by Chris Haynes, my guy, the only guy on the podcast I really referenced by name.
All the other reporters just random reporters.
He did an interview with Dame and now I know based on this, Dame is never leaving Portland. Never two days ago. There were a couple of things in this story that gave me tremendous solace. One Dame Lillard came out and told the world and told Chris Haynes, which then told the world that he met with Lebron James off season and Lebron James and Anthony Davis recruited him.
To go to the Lakers. Whoa that is?
That is a wrinkle, right, There are some things that if you're considering them, you don't come out to the world and say happened. If he's still thinking about joining a super team, then that never comes out, right, He said, that is not my thing. I sat with them and
I realized this is not for me. I could see myself in La but not with Braun and not with ad Because once you decide to chase a ring, he said, you could be moved immediately if it things don't work out, you end up leaving the town or the city that drafted you, and then all of a sudden you're onto another team, and then on to another team, and on another team I don't know, like Chris Paul, or Russell
Westbrook or Carmelo Right. So that gave me as a Portland Trailblazer fan quite a bit of peace, but not as much as this. This paragraph in the Haynes article gave me almost like I've got you your mind now, you know your mine forever now.
This quote? All right?
So it it turns out Lillard is from Oakland, right. Lillard is from Oakland, California. The closest destination to play basketball outside of places that already have two Max stars and you can't have three outside of LA, outside of Golden State, outside of Sacramento, which no one is going to go to outside of Utah, is Portland.
Right.
So he's got tremendous family life. But he also has thirty family members who have moved from Oakland to Portland, Oregon to live in him with him somewhere nearby in some enclave. He has regular barbecues with like sixty people there in West Lynn, Oregon.
Right.
And they wait for him in the family and friends section of the Modus Center, and they go to postgame dinners, and they roll Dame juniors roaming the halliday in the hallways of Modus Center.
It's like he's at home. Right.
So if Dame were decided were to decide to leave, what are those thirty people need to do.
They would all need to move, wouldn't they.
They would all need to uproot their life that they have built in the last ten years in the league that Dame's been there, and find a new house in a new neighborhood and new Infinity and FiOS and box it up and travel this and that, all thirty of them. That would disrupt an entire family units. And he knew that if he was going to leave that that would
change a reliable family dynamic that he values. How do we know he values it because even he and his long term girlfriend Kayla, who they've had some ups and downs.
I know that we all know that he put a ring on it. This summer, he put a ring on that.
And now he's put a ring on his relationship again, reunited his vows with Portland. There's no way if Dame were to leave to Philadelphia, all thirty of those family members go to Philadelphia.
No way. By the way, Philadelphia is a shithole.
And if you're from the West Coast, and you also those thirty people want to be close to the other thirty people that are in Oakland, right, that whole little dynamic is very close knit. But also close together in terms of travel time. You're not gonna move six hours across the country, seven hours across the country, flight time to go to some shitty place with shitty food and shitty fan base.
No chance.
If it was just Dame, maybe Dame's wife and kids, maybe thirty thirty people, no chance, box their shit, find Xfinity fine files in a flash. What if then he gets moved to Houston. What if the moves to Oklahoma City, God forbid. That is not the vibe I knew right then. We've got him forever, folks.
Not only, as he said publicly, he doesn't want to go to a super.
Team, he also is not destroying that little community.
He said.
My family encouraged me not to make a decision based on them.
Pause, and that's a lie.
They they said we're gonna be fine, But I know that they said that to be un selfish. Yes, when I was thinking about potentially leaving, I was thinking, is it really worth it to chase what all these other people are telling me I have to do or have to have, or is it important just to do what means something to me. If there's anybody in this league that moves to the beat, of their own drum.
It's me.
And I think people look at it like, ah, he's just taking the money. He doesn't want to win. The media is so accustomed to rocking the boat and making people move how they want them to move, and that's not gonna happen with me. Basically, in this article, Dame said, I know what you fuckers do. You guys try to plant seas. Tell me I'm not gonna be a legend unless I win a ring. And I know that there's a possibility I might not win a ring if I stay in Portland. And what's the only way I can
assure to win a ring? Oh, I have to join a super team. But that's against my ethos and my morals. But you're pushing me to do that.
What do I do?
Then you have a nervous breakdown, which you sort of have. He is ten toes down, you know what? He also said, I I am going and am willing to go down with the ship.
We got him, folks. He is willing to die for us.
He is willing to stay on this modus centered Titanic and.
Go peeo, peo peo? Are you kidding me? My guy?
Dame Willard also came out with a freestyle that said not joining a super team might be my Achilles heel, but I don't care, folks.
Then he goes on to say, yes, I'm.
Sure it would be great to play with Lebron and Ad and play in a big market, But as attractive as it sounded, and as fun as that might be, I don't feel that in my heart that's who I am or where I belong. And the one thing I must emphasize, he says, is this was not made out of comfort. I'm not afraid to go out of my comfort zone because I'm not. I'm going to live in Portland when I'm done playing, regardless, he is going.
To stay in Portland for the rest of his days.
My Lord Damian Lillard is gonna get a street in Oregon.
In Portland, Oregon.
We're gonna replace Caesar Chavez Road, which used to be Martin Luther King Junior, But because there's so much crime on MKA Junior Boulevard, they changed it to Caesar Chravis. Now they're gonna change it to Dame Lillard Boulevard. Because you know why, Dame Lillard is never fucking leaving Portland.
We've got him forever. Portland fans look in the mirror and say this.
We owe it to Dame to bring this man a ring. But you know what, if we don't, he is going to die. He's probably going to have a gravestone in Portland, Oregon. Let me just say this, The best news I could ever get as a Portland Trailblazer fan, knowing that we probably will never win a ring is knowing that Dame Willard will never leave us.
Thank the Lord, baby Jesus. I guess, I guess that's just the bull.
I guess the motion, the freedom of motion. The eighties and the nineties are largely considered to be the golden era of the NBA.
Magic Bird Jordan, it's basically.
The basketball equivalent of what your parents used to do or your grandparents used to do, where they're like, yeah, I used to walk to school in the snow with no shoes on, uphill both ways with a lunch pail box filled with potatoes.
That's the NBA. That's the old heads in the NBA.
Be like, listen, all these young guns, they don't know what it's like. They don't know what it's like to be assaulted when you go to the rim they do, they get a little slap on the hand and they go to the free throat line. I tell you what a slap in the slap in the hand was like a handshake. Back of my day, we only used.
To get gas on Wednesdays. We used to line up around the block the Depression era.
That's like the NBA players who we grew up loving. If you're my age, Shack and Penny and Charles Barkley, like Gow, these.
Guys are so soft.
Despite the guys today are in better shape, better condition, could jump higher, run faster, stronger. Earlier people believe that played in the nineties, those guys would not be able to let survive, let alone thrive in the nineties and the eighties. Why do they believe that, Well, because of something called the freedom of movement rule. Players in the NBA today have been given more freedom to move than they had in the eighties and nineties because oh, we wanted to.
See more offense.
We want We didn't want to see eighty seven ninety one games, so no hand checking shooters get a full landing area that extends multiple zip codes, full parking spaces for you to kick out and land wherever you want, and basically a guy has to come through and then move out of the way or you.
Get a foul call. All of us.
They said, it was to allow us to see the full breadth and the depth of the creativity and athleticism on display that these NBA players have in their quivers.
But truthfully, it's for money.
You know, it's so that it's more watchable and that the NBA can be more profitable.
And it has been right. But economists would.
Point out a little econ lesson for folks is there are certain things called unintended consequences. Right, you make a decision and then things happened that you didn't exactly see coming, and that happened in this freedom.
Of movement rule.
The unintended consequences of the freedom of movement rule were this one.
All contact now favors the offense.
So offensive players start initiating contact on purpose knowing that the refs are gonna call the foul on the defender because they get the benefit of the doubt, not the defender. They get to the free throw line quicker to the bonus quicker. Defenders that are defensive oriented players get in foul trouble earlier, so they either get fouled out or they back the fuck up and play more passive defense.
They give them more room, which allows you to get more open shots, allowing points to go up and up and up. But not only did that happen, you also get guys like Trey Young and James Harden and Steph Curry exploit these rules, take advantage of these rules, take advantage of the system, start gaming the system, manipulating it like uh, you know, inside trading kind of a thing, like a manipulative investor. So scoring went up every year for seven straight years. We saw record free throw attempts.
We also say out of the game that we love and this freedom of movement, this free flowing offense, that that was what it was intended to do, become stagnant on the other side because players just started throwing their bodies into their defenders, and instead of seeing motion, we started seeing free throws. Only nobody gives a fuck about just watching these specimen be at the free throw line all day.
That's not what we want.
So then the NBA is like, Okay, we gotta step in,
we gotta do something about this. Enter this last offseason, the Competition Committee decided probably three years too late, truthfully, that this is at a fucking hand, Like Trey Young, you can't run and stop short like you do on the road, and it would be like if you as a speedy sports car literally are speeding up and you're in a race and you slow the fuck down, you put on your brakes, the other car hits you and they're like, yo, is your fault that you ran into
this Frari. It's like, well, you should have saw that they were gonna stop. No, that's bullshit, right. They knew this needed to be eliminated, these non basketball moves because that's not a basketball move.
We've seen it.
Steve Nash said, what Trey Jung's doing is not basketball, even though Harden is doing the same thing.
It's just kind of funny, kind of ironic.
So they're like, okay, we gotta unvail a plan to eliminate these rules stemming from this player launching themselves into a defender.
This guy.
Monty mccletchen, of the NBA VP of Referee Development said this. The reason behind it was, we want to balance out the ability of a defensive player to compete with passion with an offensive player who can also compete with passion. What a wild, non scientific explanation behind it. And when we find that balance, good competition is the result. They don't want to favor either side too much, right eighties nineties too much defense, Uh, favored two tens too much offense.
And now star players are fucked. They are so mad.
Players are livid, Dame, Steph Harden, Trey, all of them, chucking, all of them brick city, right, just tough, tough, tough players who relied on the line, going to line like ten to fifteen times a game, like James Harden, have seen their attempts as a result, right like unders are hitting, They're decreasing like fifty percent in some cases. And now start are having to adjust and they are rugs, shrug, street Baby Trey, Dame Booker, PG all off to uncharacteristically
slow starts. Remember I say the other day, what the fuck is up with Dame? Yeah, he can't literally launch his body into people anymore and become logo Lillard. Guys can just get up into his body, and then you know, free throw attempts way down, points, way down. Scoring Now, as a result of this rule change is at its lowest level on average since twenty fourteen. Who it's been
seven years since we've seen points score this low. But the good news for folks, I guess it might be good, might be bad that the NBA might not even be done tweaking the rules.
As it concerns transition.
They're now I didn't even know this was a They had an actual word for it. They're called take fouls. The free you know, the clear path foul, They're called take fouls. So the Competition Committee encouraged the League office to now develop a new rule change that would basically eliminate this going forward, all of this for freedom of movement that made the game so exciting without allowing the thuggery of the bad boy Pistons.
Yeah, it's gonna be a really interesting thing to watch.
I think from a betting perspective, you're gonna need to take the unders on all of those little chuckers. Take the unders on Dame, Take the unders on Harden.
I got burned on that.
Take the unders on Trey, Take the unders on Steph.
And for other players like DeMar Derosian and Rashaan Holmes, guys who can actually play through contact because they are built ready to play in the eighties and nineties, the rule changes are actually allowing them to thrive and for others, like I said, like Dame, like Trey, like Harden Sink or swim Baby, because these rule changes, I hate to say, are here to stay city bitch Rag rag City, Bitch rag City, bitch rack rack City, Bitch rack City, bitch
rack Rex. Remember how hard it was for players to adjust to FEBA, Like I don't think I saw I don't think I saw Dame make a three pointer in the Olympics until like the gold medal game, like Chason Tatum was like these guys looked awful, right, Obviously, we like we just talked about, these rule changes in FOEBA are very similar to these new rule changes.
That was one reason.
Another reason, though, was the ball the ball article after article, what's up with these new spongy balls, these weird colored, weird seam balls. Right, So imagine if you took FOEBA rules, which we're now seeing some of them, at least as it relates to foul calls, and then you added a foeb ball, janky ass feb ball, and forced it upon the NBA. You would fucking hate to see that. Except for that is what's happening right now. That is where
we're at. New rules, new ball, brick city, bitch back, brick city, bitch ten.
And let's face it.
The first part of the NBA season has seen great shooters like Dame Trey do nothing but clink, and you can't really figure out why is it? The ball is the rule changes, I don't know Offenses. Offense is down five points per game on average this year, the lowest total, Like I said earlier since twenty fourteen.
The Harden rule is a part of it.
These guys have gone from shooting ten free throws a game to five free throws a game.
I'm sure that's a part of it.
But I did say last year the basketball is going to be a problem trying to play.
I like the Wilson ball.
I like the Wilson Evolution ball, but I grew up on the Wilson Evolution ball because truthfully, my poor ass couldn't afford a real leather basketball, So the spongy, sort of composite element of the evolution was sort of like great indoor balls versus some rubber, weird Nike ball that I use on double rims and metal nets and shit, Like, I'm not a basketball player, right, Like, I'm not an NBA basketball player. I'm not used to Spaulding, and now these guys are having to adjust.
Let's refresh what I said.
Spalding has been an official basketball of the NBA since nineteen eighty four. I mean that was Michael Jordan's rookie year. The ball has been the same since Michael Jordan's rookie year. Three generations of stars have only known that type of ball. And this year, for some fucking weird reason, Adam Silver doing new things. He's instituting new rules just because he
just wants to do it. He's like, ah, you know, like like playing tournament, all the guys put on the same like exact minute, just like European soccer.
We're gonna like have them not be able to know who's in who's out.
It's gonna be awesome. Like EPL is so cool, Let's do EPL things. That's what he's doing now, Okay, Like we're gonna do a mid season tournament just like the EPL. We're gonna institute some new balls. So he int to deal this offseason with Wilson for the seventy fifth anniversary, Like not a great time. To start changing things up when we're talking about lists and however, when is stacking up and these new rule changes. But okay, put a new ball into the mix too, So what's the problem
with that. Well, Paul George has is one of the players, is one of the greater shooters in the NBA, and he has a massive problem.
This is what he says in a postgame pressure PG.
He said he did not want to use the Wilson ball as an excuse of why no one's making shots. Oh, the Calves did hold the clips to seventy nine points in that game.
But he basically said, yeah, hey, this ball fucking sucks.
Like this ball, no one likes this ball. Uh, this is the ball. The Wilson is a different basketball, he said. It doesn't have the same touch, doesn't have the same softness that the Spalding ball has had. Wait wait, so so the ball is a different touch, has a different softness, comes off the rim, different, comes off the floor different.
But we're just gonna like.
Add that and the rule change into the mix and like not expect things to change.
This is a rough Row moment. Thks Row scoomy Row.
Spalding balls are made from full grain hoar ween leather, which makes them yeah, I know this.
We're gonna get a little bit into the details of this little.
Nerding nerdy shit horween leather, which makes them almost impossible to break in unless you're playing eighty two games a year. Like, they are awful when you first get them, but they are buttersoft once they're broken in, like a nice leather jacket.
You know, like you need ten years. They are using balls probably still from nineteen eighty four. They're probably using.
Those same balls because that's how long it takes to break them in. Players though love broken in leather, of course, of course they do. On the other hand, Wilson balls, like I said, are cheaper traditionally manufactured with Evo microfiber composite materials to provide a consistent feel from day one. We are in science class, folks. This makes Wilson balls tacky. So they have like a good grip due to wicking away the outer layer, which is a great ball from they wear out faster.
Let's just end they're spongier.
They're just like a weird spalding balls are like very firm and then they sort of soften. Then the Wilson balls are always soft, but kind of spongy. There's this is the reason that Kevin Durant tweeted this out.
When they announced the change.
He tweeted out, oh hell no, when Shams broke the news, how do we know that he likes that Spalding ball. Well, he shot forty five percent from three with the Spalding this year through eight games, He's shooting thirty seven percent from three with the Wilson.
That is not just a slight difference.
That is a what we would call a statistical and not like three standard deviations out in terms of oh yeah, this is a fucking problem.
We might need to go back to this Spalding ball asap.
Rocky Wilson says they tried to emulate the Spaulding ball. It's a lie. They said that they utilize the same leather, but it's not the same.
It is not the same.
Multiple people have said that the Wilson grooves are longer, supposedly for a firmer grip. But how do we know that it's a problem. Well, Sham's reported this. NBA and Formed teams today that the Competition Committee is unanimously supportive of the league's new rules. Officiating non basketball moves and the new Wilson game ball was also discussed, with the league and players working directly with Wilson to adjust as appropriate, which means this ball is fucked up, right. We all
know what you see. We're seeing it.
We know that it's not the non basketball moves. It's the ball. You don't discuss a ball unless there's something wrong, right, unless it's a problem. Devin Booker is clunking away and he is a bucket. He's shooting twenty eight percent right now from three and said, the Wilson ball feels different ball to ball.
Uh, oh no, that's not what listen. You can't have the balls not be consistent from court to court. This isn't fucking high school here. This isn't the random Like, oh, We're gonna go up the Rutger today and use you know, Tommy's ball for game one and JoJo's ball for game two and three, and then I'll bring my own ball, Like whoever wins the game gets to bring their own ball. The game is fucked up.
Something, something's going on here. The current NBA.
Three point percentage right now is thirty four point two percent. That is the lowest sense nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, the whole league as a whole is shooting forty four percent, which is the lowest sense two thousand and four.
But yeah, it's not the ball, right, it's not wink wink, wink wink.
I don't care what the NBA is trying to pedal. They need to fix this fucking fast, and they just put whatever they use in five Serve Forum to make opponents airball threes all day into NBA arenas. I don't think that that's what it is. I don't think it's just like some anomaly in the humidity of the arena.
It is the ball. It is the ball, and it's probably the rule change.
It's probably some combination of both until you figure out they need to get rid of one of these things and then figure out what's happening.
I assume that if the Wilson probably paid them a lot of money, right they did.
They're not gonna be able to go back to Spalding. But they should really just do. They should just hire Spaulding and then put the name Wilson on it. That's really what they should do. It's gonna be brick City for sure until Dame and Beal and Trey get used to it, and the harsh truth is that it's worse for the.
Game when they have it in.
That's all the time that we have for the heat check. We back Monday evening. Please do not miss it. Do not forget to give us a follow at at trist to cricket at this League on TikTok, download subscribe, Please give.
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Get it in the morning like Alonzo run Ring, got cheese like a nutcho feeling I know as bitch wear Pancho, and Pancho got my seat back next daring that I don't get that